Points of Order

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

The Leader of the House is entitled to respond if he wishes. If he does not wish to do so, it is fair to say that it is very much the norm that the Government should come forward with the appropriate resolution. It is not strictly a matter for the Chair if that does not happen, but knowing the right hon. Gentleman as I do and how familiar he is with that long-standing requirement, and knowing his tendency, quite prudently, only to ask a question when he already knows the answer, any member of the Government is taking some risk in persisting in failing to do what is expected. I sense that the right hon. Gentleman will, to put it bluntly, keep banging on about the matter until he gets what he wants.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I have two brief points. First, I think the Leader of the House perhaps inadvertently misled the House in response to questions from my hon. Friends about jobcentre closures in Glasgow. He stated that the plans would be subject to full consultation, but they will not. The Government plan to consult on only two of eight closures across the city, and I cannot stress enough to the House how devastating that news is.

Secondly, Mr Speaker, will you advise me and hon. Friends who represent Glasgow constituencies what recourse is open to us to put right the gross discourtesy that was shown to us yesterday by the Department for Work and Pensions? We had to read about the closures in the press, and it took Ministers more than seven hours to get in touch with us. We consider that to be grossly disrespectful, so can you advise on whether any recourse is open to us in that respect?

[Mr Speaker]

To some extent, the hon. Gentleman has obtained his own salvation in airing his discontent on the Floor of the House. The relevant Minister is not in a position immediately to reply so that the hon. Gentleman would be able to establish some facts on the ground that are to his advantage. I was not familiar with the point of detail that the hon. Gentleman highlighted about two matters being the subject of consultation rather than the full eight. I hope that he will forgive me if I say that that really is not a matter for me. I cannot be expected to get into the interstices of the system, but it is normal in matters of this kind that affect constituencies for the Members affected to be given the courtesy of advance notification rather than having to read about matters in the newspapers. It may well be that some rather greater discipline within ministerial offices is required to avoid a repetition of that rather unfortunate occurrence.

Autumn Statement

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

As far as we are concerned, that is the principal purpose of the mayoral combined authorities: yet another lever to drive productivity in the English regions. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government will be happy to work with my hon. Friend on that project.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

I am always shining on you, Mr Speaker.

The Chancellor is no philistine, so he will know that Lloyd George, a predecessor of his, visited Holmwood House in my constituency in 1928. Although the right hon. Gentleman appears to have dismissed my appeal for restorative funding for the building next year as we approach the bicentenary of its architect, will he assure me that this is not quite the end of the road? Will he commit, as the Scottish Secretary has done, to engaging positively on the matter in future?

[Mr Hammond]

The danger, of course, of having indulged myself with one specific announcement is that hon. Members are bound to assume that that means bad news for other projects. The bulk of the funding available for that kind of work will be held and distributed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport; my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport will make announcements as appropriate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Following the announcement at Budget 2016, UK Asset Resolution Limited has launched a programme of sales of the Bradford & Bingley mortgage assets that it holds. That will be designed to raise sufficient proceeds to repay the £15.65 billion debt to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme and, in turn, the corresponding loan from the Treasury. It is expected, subject to market conditions and ensuring value for money, that this programme of sales will have been concluded in full by the end of 2017-18.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

The Government gave £5 million in funding for the refurbishment of the Burrell collection in my constituency, with the money coming from cash collected from the LIBOR scandal. Will the Chancellor consider a similar funding scheme for Holmwood house in my constituency, given that it is the bicentenary of the architect’s birth next year and it needs some TLC?

[Mr Hammond]

I am glad that at this stage of the process before the autumn statement, I am able to say that all submissions will be carefully considered, and if the hon. Gentleman would care to let me have something in writing, I will happily look at it.

Tax Avoidance and Evasion

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, and I think there is scope for going further on it. What we have agreed is to ensure that we have access to those central registers. That is clearly very helpful but I think more progress can be made in that area and it is something to return to in the future.

Panama is one of the very few financial centres that has not yet fully committed to these international standards. We are clear that it should do so, and we continue to press for Panama to join the club of responsible nations. Of course, there is more international work to be done, particularly on tackling money laundering. That is why we are hosting an anti-corruption summit in May, with the aim of encouraging consensus not just on exchanging information, but on publishing such information and putting it into the public domain, as we are doing in the UK. Once again, Britain is leading the world on transparency, accountability and responsibility.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

rose—

[Mr Gauke]

There are a few more points that I want to make, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me.

Let me address the subject of the UK’s Crown dependencies and overseas territories. Reform of the regimes of the overseas territories and Crown dependencies has been a key objective for the UK, and the reforms that we have secured have been considerable. All the UK Crown dependencies and overseas territories with financial centres are signed up as early adopters of the common reporting standard, reporting annually from 2017 in respect of data that have already been collected. The Crown dependencies and overseas territories will share information with the UK from this year, one year earlier than the rest of the world. All the UK Crown dependencies and overseas territories with a financial centre have committed to transparency on company ownership.

Last Monday the Prime Minister announced that our overseas territories and Crown dependencies have agreed that they will provide UK law enforcement and tax agencies with full access to information on the beneficial ownership of companies. For the first time, UK police and law enforcement agencies will be able to see exactly who owns and controls every company incorporated in those territories. This is a major step forward in transparency, the result of the Government’s sustained work in this area.

It is right that we expect the overseas territories and Crown dependencies to meet international standards, and indeed they do. Yes, we want them to move towards a public central register. That is not yet the international standard. If, as the Leader of the Opposition suggests, every former colony that does not have a public register should be recolonised, where would we begin? Is he proposing that we invade Delaware? [Interruption.] Now we come to mention it, says the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris).

The reality is—and this is the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) was right to raise—that the UK is in favour of a public register. We are implementing a public register in June for the first time. We have never had one before. We want other countries to do it, but very few of our European Union colleagues do so. It is not the case that the US does it. We want to ensure that it becomes the new international standard, but Orders in Council condemning overseas territories for failing to do what most of our EU colleagues do not do would not be fair or effective. The approach that we have taken has brought the overseas territories and Crown dependencies a long way. I fear that the approach advocated by the Labour party would fail to work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

Well, it is some scandal, is it not, that has been leaked to us? Criminals, politicians and dictators have been hiding billions and billions of pounds in offshore accounts under the names of companies that do not actually exist. In fact, it is the scale and nature of the scandal that causes me to be so depressed about the nature of the debate we have had both in the Chamber this afternoon and in the run-up to this afternoon. It has taken us almost two weeks to actually start debating the issue. I did not quite buy everything that the hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) had to say, but I thought he at least gave one of the most incisive speeches among this afternoon’s contributions.

It is obvious that this issue is such a major hot potato for the two main parties in this Chamber: so hot that they seem to prefer to kick it back and forward—“You’re worse than us.” “We’re better than you.” Meanwhile, the public want us to debate the issues raised by the leaks. Forget the Twitter hashtags. Forget what has been written in the newspapers. Forget the sneering snobbery on one side and the braying mobs on the other. Let us actually deal with the issue. The issue is not about class; we can have an academic discussion about class later on. This is about criminality. That is what the motion seeks to address and what I think all of us in the Chamber really want to address.

It strikes me that there are two key ways in which we can tackle the problem: through the resources made available to the public agencies and through changes to legislation. As a lot of Members have mentioned, we can also look at beefing up international co-operation. I genuinely welcome the measures the Prime Minister announced in his statement to the House on Monday. The cross-agency taskforce and the funding that will come with it, and the other measures relating to legislation, are extremely important and to be welcomed. I would like the Minister, in summing up, to say whether Interpol will have a role to play. I have not heard anything about that at all. In fact, no public statement has been made on this issue on Interpol’s website. I would therefore like to know whether Interpol will be invited to the corruption summit the Prime Minister will be hosting.

I am concerned about the pattern that forms when big scandals break, whether it is this one, the Volkswagen scandal or the Google scandal. This is a very British pattern—a pattern of only ever responding to events. I had hoped to hear more about how the Government intend to beef up the resources of HMRC to deal with this, because it is clearly not working. We have had some back and forth about more money, fewer staff and more staff, and fewer centres. It is clearly not working, so somebody really needs to step back and look at the problem within the context that actually exists. I had also hoped to hear more about how we would be trying to recoup some of the tax we are owed. I go back to the point made earlier: this is about criminality. I can only hope that some of this will be getting talked about in the Paris talks today, at which, I understand, the UK Government are represented.

The Government made a lot of their ambition to secure economic security for Britain. They are absolutely right to mention that. The threats we face in terms of financial security are not to be taken lightly. In my view, they should be up there with the threats we face from terrorist organisations. There are different consequences, but both are absolutely serious. Just as the Prime Minister announced the recruitment of additional staff for agencies such as MI5 in the aftermath of attacks on our doorstep in Europe, he should seek to do the exact same thing for the public agencies dealing with criminal finance.

I do not have much time to go into the detail, but I would like the Government to reflect more about what happens in Australia with unexplained wealth orders. I shall not throw my full weight and support behind them, because I am hesitant about what they mean for the presumption of innocence and the right to silence. We should, however, look at the issue. Such orders are also being used successfully in Italy against gangs such as the Mafia.

The public require us to act and to stop the politicking that we have seen in some contributions today. This is a big challenge, and what we need to deal with it are the fine minds of this House—there are some, such as the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), the former Chair of the Public Accounts Committee—coming together on a cross-party or perhaps even a cross-parliamentary basis. We could tap in to some of the devolved Parliaments as well, and start to take the issue seriously. We should ignore all those who operate under a cloud of anonymity, who tell us, “You wouldn’t understand it; it is too difficult”. That just allows them to carry on doing what has got us to this point. Failure to act will keep on feeding the cancerous way in which our politics is conducted. That will be to the detriment of us all.

Spending Review and Autumn Statement

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

The Burrell Collection refurb is vital for pulling visitors to the south side of Glasgow in my constituency, so I welcome the announcement of £5 million of funding. Will the Chancellor go a little further and commit to meeting me and local people who are keen to build up the south side as a tourist place in Glasgow so that we can really raise its profile?

[Mr Osborne]

I am very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and, indeed, anyone he wants to bring with him. If there are sensible projects in Glasgow that we can fund, we will of course look at them. My view is that the Barnett formula and the block grant to Scotland does not mean that the UK Government have done all we can do to help Glasgow. That is why we have the city deal and why we are supporting the Burrell Collection today. If he has some other good ideas, we will be able to fund them too.

Greece

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Britain is overly dependent on its exports to the rest of the EU. About 50% of our exports go to the EU. We have been working very hard to expand our exports to fast-growing economies in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Although, in general, UK export performance has been quite disappointing in recent years, that is principally because of the weakness of the European economy. Our export performance to many of these emerging economies has been very much better, and we want to build on that—particularly, of course, our links with the Commonwealth countries.

[Stewart McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

I offer the Chancellor this analysis: the class divide is with us in this debate. On the one hand, the rich people in Greece are moving their money out of the country, with the IMF lobbying on their behalf for further public sector cuts and against tax rises for the rich, while poor and working-class people in Greece are forced to live with access to only €60 of cash a day. So here’s the question: whose side is the Chancellor on?